


The Path of Slow Time

by Gehayi



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Gen, Kings & Queens, Prophecy, Quests
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 22:17:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7286791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gehayi/pseuds/Gehayi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dido tries to save her people and a city. The Sphinx gives her a prophecy of how to save herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Path of Slow Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bardsley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bardsley/gifts).



By the seventh year of his reign, Pygmalion the Tyrant was so greedy, so eager to glut himself on gold, that he was all but biting his kingdom in two. He was loathed by prince, poet and pauper alike, as much as his sister Dido was loved—so much so that Pygmalion dared not slay her. 

But Dido was wed to the wealthiest man in Phoenicia, and wealth and popularity have toppled more than one king. And so Pygmalion slew Sychaeus on the altar as he prayed, burnt the corpse in a mocking offering to the gods, stole every last ounce of his wealth, and told his sister that Sychaeus had been sent off on a diplomatic mission far away. He planned, eventually, to tell Dido that he had received news that her husband had fallen ill with some terrible pestilence, followed by more letters saying that Sychaeus was worsening, dying, dead, and that his body had been burned to prevent contagion.

Pygmalion reckoned without the ghost of Sychaeus, who told his unwitting widow what had befallen him and showed her his death wound. He spoke, too, of Pygmalion's hatred and envy, and the thin thread by which her own life hung. He showed her in a vision where his stolen wealth lay, and then advised her to flee, carrying away both the bloodstained gold and the household gods her brother so despised.

And Dido listened. Knowing that she would need companions, she contacted all in the land who hated the king—or who feared that he hated them—and asked them to sail to a new land with her. When all those who were willing to leave were ready, she and her most loyal companions searched for solid, well-built ships that could carry them far from the Phoenician capital of Tyre, and by a great stroke of good luck found a fleet of well-rigged ships in the harbor. Perhaps they were a war fleet about to be sent out by Pygmalion to raid and conquer. Perhaps they were a fleet owned by one of Tyre's merchant princes. Who can say? But all the legends agree; the sailors did not desert their ships, nor did Dido's guards and soldiers slay them. And though she told them of her plans to flee in a day or so, not one betrayed Dido or her people to Pygmalion.

And so, three days later, when the tide was high, Dido and her numerous companions made their way to the docks, all bearing something vital—food, clothing, shelter, and a handful of non-essentials in which their memories were tangled. The strongest of her companions bore Sychaeus' stolen gold, a twentieth to each ship; Dido herself bore the small statues of her family's household gods. Before the sun dawned the next day, half the kingdom had sailed away, taking the bulk of the treasury and all the blessings of the gods with it. And though for the next forty years, Pygmalion raged and cursed and damned his sister to the deepest of all hells, he never found one ship, a single rebel, or a fingernail's length of the missing gold. 

Though Dido and her companions were protected by the gods, still they had to stop now and then to take on water and fresh food. The first place they stopped was Cyprus, where eighty prostitutes—some weary of their lives and anxious for a change, and others willing to gamble that the former Phoenicians might give them more of love and kindness than they had had for many a year—asked if they might come along. Someone holy—tradition says a priest of Jupiter, but women whisper that it was truly a priestess of Aphrodite—overheard their pleas, telling them that if they were sincere in this wish, then the priestess would ask Aphrodite Pandemos, the Aphrodite of the common people, she who indulged in sensual debauchery, to heal them of any illnesses, physical, mental or emotional, that they might bear. And they were, and she did. 

When Dido saw this, she implored the priestess to come with them…and to ask Aphrodite Pandemos to bless her companions thus as well, if the goddess was willing. For Dido knew well how much fear and pain lay behind her people's flight from their homeland and how wounded minds and souls can bleed for lifetimes.

The goddess listened, and Dido's companions were healed as well. But not Dido herself. Unthinkingly, she had forgotten to include herself in her own prayer.

The second place that they landed was in Memphis, Egypt. And this is where our story truly begins, for this was where Dido encountered a not-quite-monster and was given both a prophecy and a warning.

*** 

When Dido's fleet docked at Memphis, the city was ancient beyond words, carved from bedrock out of gray granite and pale yellow limestone, bedecked and bedizened with gold, electrum and alabaster. By the time she beheld it, it had been a temple city, the home of the Pharaoh's palace, a port, a fortress, the capital of Lower Egypt, and a necropolis. It remained wondrously, sadly beautiful…like an aging empress, all grandeur and pride. Let the sun cast one ray on her from the right direction, and you can see in the imperial eyes the vibrant, passionate girl she still is in her heart.

But Dido had little time to note this, for almost the moment that the ships had docked, a scribe came rushing down the docks to warn them away.

"It isn't safe," he lamented. "The city is under a curse of the gods. Leave now before it afflicts you, too!"

Be sure that several of the Tyrians were more than willing to do just that. Taking on fresh water and food seemed like folly and worse in the face of divine displeasure. But Dido was young and healthy and unafraid, and from her flagship's deck she called down to the scribe, whose name was Huischera, "What sort of curse afflicts this place?"

"The port," said Huischera grimly, "has become a trap. By day, Memphis is as you see it—as fine and strong a city as any could desire. You would not know that any ill afflicted us at all. But as soon as the last ray of the sun passes below the horizon, an immense Sphinx appears in the desert, so large that the Sphinx statue opposite it seems but a frail and half-formed cub in comparison, and so powerful that it could crush the necropolises outside of our city with a blow from one paw."

"Why do you not leave during the day?" Dido asked, puzzled.

"Because while the Sphinx is not visible then, it is no less present. Those who try to leave run aground on sandbars that never existed before. The wind changes direction or dies altogether. Those who try to walk to the nearest town are likely to be afflicted with pestilence between one breath and the next…or be herded back to the city by hungry crocodiles. Rarely—very rarely—those who have only just arrived are permitted to leave, though why those few are spared and the rest of us condemned, we don't know."

By now the ships' crews were all for heading back to the Nile Delta and, from there, to the Syrian Sea—the ocean that the Romans speak of as "Mare Nostrum"—"our sea"—and that the tribes north of Rome call "the ocean at the center of the world." Dido's soldiers and guards, however, wished to fight the monster…perhaps _because_ it was so unlikely that they could defeat it. Many of them felt physically sickened by the fact that they had had to flee from Pygmalion and his forces rather than slay them; even more spoke longingly of a victory won against impossible odds, as if this alone could restore their shattered honor.

Dido was more than willing to turn about and dock at Sais or Bubastis before the curse settled on the shoulders of herself and her people, but so strenuously did her warriors object that she was forced to acquiesce to their demands.

"But no volunteers," she said, her voice carrying clearly to each and every ship. "The soldiers and guards will draw lots so that there is one man from each ship. And when twenty men have been chosen, you will draw lots again until there are only five. And those five will go."

 _And then we will mourn,_ her expression added. _For this is folly beyond words, and a waste of lives besides._

Huischera shouted that Dido sending even one man on such a useless quest idiotic, while Dido's military complained that those who were not warriors should not make decisions for warriors. Dido smiled, repeated what she had said before, and then said it again. Eventually the complaints faded and the drawing of lots began. And that night, one grandsire, two men in their prime, one youth, and one boy who had just officially come of age and who maintained that he was _so_ as much a man as anyone else marched off to do battle with the Sphinx.

A few hours later, the night was rent by a long, ululating wail of pain. Just one, which was abruptly cut off.

The next day, after the rites of mourning had been performed, the scribe Huischera returned, this time wearing a gloomy air and a sour expression. Once again, he urged Dido (and indeed, the people who had And Dido once more was on the deck of her flagship, waiting for him.

"What does the Sphinx do when people challenge it but don't wish to do battle?"

"Ah," said Huischera, "then it is time for the riddle game."

"What's the riddle game?"

Huischera explained that supernatural beings—ghosts, gods, monsters and the like—often asked humans tricky questions when they were alone at night, and that a human had to be both fast and clever to be right all the time. "And it is said," he added, "that if a human wins the game, the creature will grant that person a single boon."

"And if she loses?"

"Then the Sphinx will kill her," said Huischera, meeting her liquid-dark eyes. "And I must confess…I know of not a single human who has ever won this game. And many have played since the Sphinx first arrived."

At this, Dido fell silent, as did her wiser advisors. And that probably would have been the end of it if not for the derision of the remaining soldiers who felt that they had taken _their_ chance and that if they were not complete cowards, the so-called shrewd and intelligent ones ought to do the same.

A glance from Dido silenced the soldiers and guards, as did her words that she did not want others to die on a day of mourning. Yet, as any child knows, there are ways of shaming others that have nothing to do with speech…especially if those others have been deemed unfair and unjust. A sardonic expression or a flicker of contempt in the eyes can cut out a heart more swiftly than the strongest, swiftest sword. 

It didn't take long before the wise and the clever felt foolish and useless, and crept out of sight into the bowels of the ships or slunk from the ships to the docks. By the end of the day, ten advisors had vanished, though whether they had headed toward the desert to play the riddle game or had decided that they would rather spend a day or two somewhere that the cruel-eyed military wasn't, no one knew. All that was certain was that they were gone. And, as evening turned into night and night turned into morning, Dido knew, in the same way that she had known that the ghost of Sychaeus was no dream, that none of them would return.

That day she did not go up on deck. Though she was curious to hear what Huischera had to say, she found herself wondering if he was even the scribe he claimed to be. He might be a living man, but who was to say that a living person could not be an agent of the Sphinx? Perhaps he was a malicious ghost, his words and voice plucking at fears the way that a skilled musician plucked the strings of a harp. Perhaps he was something the Sphinx had created from its blood and breath to lure humans closer, and was no more alive than a jar or a fish net. All seemed equally possible.

And so she told the captain of the warship on which she stood to sail northeast to the port of Bubastis. "And if that is suffering from a curse as well," she added, "then sail northwest from Bubastis to Sais. We can't stay here; we've already lost fifteen people. I won't lose more."

"What will _you_ do?" asked the captain, a glint lighting his yellowish-brown eyes. Dido was suddenly certain that he knew she was planning something…and that if she admitted it, she would not have a prayer of putting her idea into action.

She sighed heavily, her body shaking and swaying like a willow in a windstorm. "What _can_ I do, Captain Baal-Eser? My advisors fear scorn more than my wrath, and I know nothing of fighting with sword or spear. And it is a three-day journey to Bubastis. What can I do but retreat to my cabin and, without pausing or ceasing, beseech the gods for mercy?"

Though Baal-Eser knew full well that Dido had rebelled against her royal brother and taken much of Phoenicia's population with her, he did not think of her as he would have a king who had barely escaped captivity and had then gone into exile. Such a king might well have something to prove to his people. But a pious queen who had anointed altars with her tears, who had carried her gods from her homeland, and who had not hesitated to beg a goddess of Cyprus for a miracle? Of course she would pray to the gods even as they strove to reach an uncursed port. What _else_ could she do?

The captain forgot, if he had ever known, that once, before her brother Pygmalion had decided that only he could reign in Phoenicia, Dido had been his co-ruler, a queen in her own right—and one who had not flinched from doing the difficult or the unpopular when need demanded it.

And so bowing low, he asked that she let him depart. Once he was back among his sailors, he had them signal the other ships with the queen's orders and then told his own crew to prepare to sail to Bubastis.

After the captain left her presence, Dido retreated to her cabin. There she slipped out of her own simple yet elegant gown of Tyrian purple into a short blue tunic and, over that, a loose, knee-length, crimson men's robe that probably belonged to the first mate. She then donned some sandals, binding them all the way up her calves, and placed a conical cap atop her thick black curls. She had no beard and no way to simulate one, but she knew well that if people were looking at her attire rather than her face, she could fool them for a minute or two. Long enough to get away.

Lastly, she bound around her waist a yellowish cord to which a full money pouch was attached. Men most often slung such straps across their torsos, from one shoulder to the hip opposite, but she dared not do the same; a woven cord lying crossways between two breasts would pull the cloth around the breasts tighter, making it obvious that she wasn't what she was pretending to be. She wouldn't even have that possible moment of deception. Phoenician men did not generally wear anything about their waists, but it was the only chance she had.

Her heart hammering so hard within her chest that she could scarcely breathe, she made her way first from the depths of the ship to the deck and then from the deck down the gangplank, trying diligently to make her slightly averted face and her refusal to greet them look like nothing more than momentary preoccupation with duty.

An hour or so later, Dido had traded the conical cap for a headscarf of the sort that desert travelers wore and, in the market near the docks, had purchased not only enough figs and dates for several meals and a brick of salt, but also flasks and water skins, all full of fresh water, and of a sufficient number to quench the thirst of at least a hundred lions.

Then, her heavy pack strapped to her back and her head held as high as that of any questing hero, Dido the queen stepped into the desert which lay west of Memphis.

***

How long Dido walked, she never knew, for once she set foot on the desert sands, time seemed to seep away. The sun—a molten disc affixed in a whitish-blue sky—stayed in the same position from one hour to the next. Searing sand crept into the crevices between her garments and her flesh, burning and abrading her skin. Dido's eyes felt as if they were filled with grit and glass; at times they were so dry that she wondered if all her tears were being stolen from her. And there was nowhere to rest that was not scalding hot, not the smallest pebble that was touched by a drop of morning dew or the shadow of a cloud.

She walked on and on until she was ready to drop, rationing out her figs, dates and salt, as well as one flask of water, so that all would last the length of this interminable journey. She searched the horizon—in vain—for landmarks. And she implored her gods for strength to survive this wasteland, which, she had begun to think, was the apotheosis of all deserts.

When the sun finally set—and that seeming day might have lasted anywhere from three months to three thousand years—Dido's legs refused to bear her any longer. Her bones might have been made of melting butter, for she could not even stand.

And so she crawled. She crawled on her knees and then, when her knees failed her as well, on her belly. When she could no longer pull herself forward, she leaned to one side and rolled, wincing each time she heard the soft clinks and thuds of the flasks and water skins in her pack colliding with each other. This was twice the torment that it might have been, for Dido, despite her careful rationing, was withering away from lack of water and salt, and each time the flasks bumped into each other, she could almost feel them shattering and all the priceless, life-giving water pouring down her back in a useless torrent.

Then, finally, she caught a glimpse of a full moon rising over a necropolis—a cluster of pyramids which strongly resembled some near Memphis. This cheered Dido, as she knew that she was coming to a place where the walls between the human world and this world in which she was currently wandering were weak. And her heart soared when she saw a statue of a stone Sphinx silhouetted against a crescent moon, for this statue also lay near Memphis.

At last, however, Dido saw something beyond dunes, pyramids and statues. She beheld the Sphinx herself.

The creature was immense, so tall that she could easily have played with the pyramids as if they were toys. Her head was that of a human woman, her long thick black curls flowing over what looked like her shoulders, her dark eyes visibly snappish even in the light of the half moon. From the neck down, she was a lioness, her fur like alabaster and her claws made of silver. A faint blue-white glow surrounded her, as if she were kin to the sun and the moon. Dido stared at her, feeling as if she might never leave off staring. 

"Well?" demanded the Sphinx in a voice filled with command. "Who are you?"

"I was Dido of Phoenicia," she said—striving to stand up, bow with the courtesy and grace of a queen, and not fall over all at the same time. "Now I'm just a wanderer looking for a new land, along with my people." She paused for a moment and then plunged ahead. "May I ask what you would like to be called?"

There was a moment of startled silence. Had it truly been so long since anyone had asked the Sphinx her name?

"I am Rekhetre," the Sphinx finally answered. "And how do _you_ wish to do battle with me?"

"Is there more than one way?" Dido countered, as she had been hoping for exactly that.

"There are three. First is the Path of the Sword. I must warn you that if you take that path, you will die, for no weapon can bring me any form of harm, and if the weight of my paws does not kill you, my teeth and claws will. 

"Second is the Path of Memory and Wit. You _might_ succeed there." Rekhetre's tone made it clear that she doubted it. "All you need do is answer one of my riddles correctly. I can't say what would happen after that. A cursed king once answered my eldest sister's favorite riddle correctly and _she_ killed herself." Rekhetre growled as she spoke of it. "I still do not know if she made the choice to do so or was compelled."

"What would happen if I couldn't answer your riddles?" Dido asked, craning her neck back so that she could look Rekhetre in the eye.

Rekhetre shrugged. "Those who fail but who are clever and imaginative, we Sphinxes eat. They nourish our minds, you see. The others—the dullards who have pride and confidence but little else—vanish. I've heard that they are devoured by time, that they are reborn as ideas to give them the opportunity to become the beings of wisdom they deemed themselves…but I truly do not know what happens to them after their bodies melt away."

Dido did her best to choke back her anger. The Sphinx sounded so indifferent to all these deaths.

"And the third path?"

"The Path of Slow Time. But no one takes that road."

"Why not?"

"Because it requires the person taking it to walk across the desert of all deserts to me in a single day and night—a day and night that, taken together, last ten thousand y—" Rekhetre broke off, visibly flabbergasted. "That is what you did?"

"Yes. And I brought a gift with me." 

And with that, Dido began unpacking the water skins and flasks she had carried for so long, grateful that the water still was still sloshing audibly in all of them. Why she and the water had not both dried up and blown away to oblivion, she couldn't imagine.

The Sphinx gazed down at the pitifully small number of water containers lying before her, which would not have provided her with so much as one mouthful, and said not a word. Then slowly she stretched out a paw and touched the water containers. Instantly, they grew in size, becoming proportional to her as well.

For a time, the Sphinx feasted on the clear, cold water, pausing only when she realized that Dido was all but expiring of thirst. After that, they shared what they had.

"Why did you decide to give me a gift?" Rekhetre said in a small, hesitant voice when they were done.

"I thought of what it would be like to be out in the desert for a long, long time," Dido said quietly. "And of how hard it would be to speak—or even care about what someone else wanted—if my throat was swollen shut from thirst."

Rekhetre considered this. "And you had no idea that it would take so long?"

Dido shook her head.

"Then," Rekhetre said, sounding bewildered, "you've won. A walk of a day and night that took ten thousand years, a gift to a stranger you'd no reason to trust, and—most important—doing it all while unaware that it even _was_ a quest. So what reward do you want?"

"I suppose it would be useless to ask for the lives of the last fifteen people who fought you?"

"Completely," Rekhetre said in a kindly tone. "I don't make the rules. I can bring _you_ back to your own place and time, but the dead—and whatever those who vanish in the riddle game are—remain gone."

It hadn't even occurred to Dido that she might be marooned in this desert forever. "Thank you," she said, her throat suddenly tight with fear. "I would appreciate such a kindness."

"So you have a path home, even if I cannot restore your companions. What else would you like?"

"Well…there was a scribe who said that you'd brought a curse from the gods on the city of Memphis—"

Rekhetre laughed, a harsh, lonely sound. "Huischera? He regards my kind as bringers of curses because humans challenge us and lose…which usually means death. Occasionally ships trying to escape me and mine are stricken by strong winds or punished by pestilence, but that is the will of the gods and—" Dido heard a word that seemed to combine the meanings of _Moirai_ , the Greek Fates, and _Ma'at_ , the Egyptian goddess/personification of truth, balance and order. "I force no one to face me. Huischera…he prefers to believe that I am a powerful enemy rather than an instrument of the gods, like all the living. Yes, and even some of the dead. Enemies can be defeated, you see. Must be, some would say. And it is so much easier to believe that a monster in form truly _is_ a monster in spirit, is it not?"

Dido flinched as she saw the defiant pain in Rekhetre's expression. "I am sorry, Your Greatness," she replied, speaking as she would have to a fellow queen. "I should not have assumed that Huischera was telling the truth."

 _No, you shouldn't,_ Rekhetre's eyes answered. But aloud she said, "You seem to be having a great deal of trouble choosing a reward that I can give. So I will choose for you. You will find the land that you seek, though you will have to be quick with a knife and go around in circles to succeed."

 _How can going around in circles achieve anything?_ Dido wondered. But she kept silent.

"You will live there with your people and you will be happy," Rekhetre continued. "But—you must not let flames of any sort touch you ever again, for heat will consume your will, your mind and your spirit, and finally your body as well. Beware of such fire. Beware even more of one much praised who belongs to a people who do not yet exist. Most of all, beware of the goddess of love and her sons. Will you remember this?"

"I will remember," Dido said, though she scarcely understood what—or who—the warnings were about. She did not ask, as she strongly suspected that Rekhetre had already told her as much as she could, and far more than some divine powers would have liked.

"Then get on my back," said Rekhetre, "and I will carry you to your ship, which is even now sailing to Bubastis."

It took some time. Dido would have had to put forth considerable effort to climb the Pyramids, and Rekhetre was far taller than they. But at last she was sitting on the Sphinx's back, gripping white fur with both fists.

And then Rekhetre began running. 

***

Great was the rejoicing (and even greater the shock, for Captain Baal-Eser had only discovered that she was missing moments before) when Dido walked from Rekhetre's back onto the deck of her flagship. But the amazement of the crews and passengers of every ship in Dido's fleet escalated when Rekhetre, speaking so that all could hear her, wherever they were, told them of Dido's victory and her attempts to resurrect the dead and undo what seemed to be the vilest of curses. When they heard that the Sphinx had gifted them with a prophecy and that this prediction stated plainly that they would not only reach their destination but would successfully build a home there, the cheering began and did not stop.

Rekhetre shook her head. "Remember everything I told you," she said to Dido, "for I do not think that we will meet again." And with that—and evidently deciding that she had spent enough time near Memphis, she ran east.

Dido wrote down the prophecy as Rekhetre had spoken it, but she could make little sense of it. All she could do was keep a dagger close and study circles as mathematicians do and hope that both would somehow save her, though she knew not how. 

Several months later, when Dido's ships landed in Tunisia, a Berber king, Iarbas by name, offered her and her people a temporary refuge—as much land as could be encompassed by a single ox-hide. Dido, recalling the prophecy, cut the ox-hide into strips, knotted the strips together to form a long, thin rope, and then encircled an immense hill that was large enough to be the foundation of a fortress. The hill that became known as Bysra—"ox-hide"—was the first location to become part of Carthage. Carthage became a strong and vital nation, and Dido was very happy as both its resident and its queen…

…until, that is, the son of Aphrodite, who was also the destined ancestor of the Roman people, came to Carthage, and Dido was consumed with the fire of love for him.

But that is another story.


End file.
